How Do Recruiters "Read" Your Resume in Under 20 Seconds?

The short answer is they don’t. They scan your resume with a very specific set of data in their mind and if they determine your resume matches this data only then will they decide to actually read your resume. I’ve personally reviewed probably at least a million resumes in my 40 years in this business. When you review 50 to 200 resumes per day, they add up and at this volume, it would be impossible to “read” each of them and it isn’t necessary for me to do so. If you’re a candidate, you may still get angry about that, but at least I’m going to explain the reality of what happens with your resume in this article to help understand why it’s done this way.